Review: Song of the Myrne: What Lies Beneath

Sometimes I think that people playing PC are drinking the koolaide.  Everyone says it’s not about the graphics it’s about the gameplay.  This line relates to games that are very pretty but have shitty gameplay.  This line was never intended to describe games that has crappy graphics and plays really well, it was always a denouncing cry against really pretty games that don’t offer much.  The line was never intended to be a point where people should really aim for the bottom of graphics.

The game is the ugly side of the 8-bit world, Atari.  The beautiful side of the 8-bit world is, Nintendo.  The clear distinction between the two was that Atari required imagination to think of what you were looking at whereas with the Nintendo it was clear as day.

Here is Atari 1982.

Here is Nintendo, 1991.

Now here is Sony of the Myrne, 2015.

Use your imagination, because a lot of times figuring out objects will be easier said than done.  Sometimes you run into an enemy and it looks kind of friendly.  You walk up to it and punch it first to see whether it takes damage, because that’s the only real way to figure out what’s friend and what’s foe.

But that’s fine because the game has about 80 weapons you can use to test them out with.  Weapons can be found all over the game, but you can also craft them out of materials you can find.  Crafting was a really big sell in the game, but unfortunately it meets a weird balance.

Crafting hardcores want tedious crafting that gives insanely high results that flow into a game that will change over time.  Skyrim is a perfect example.  You level up your alchemy to make more powerful potions to help deal with the new threats. But maybe you choose to go the path of the thief and you get a different set of skills.  This game doesn’t have that sort of depth.  The crafting is casual and doesn’t have to be done.  The game can be completed without it making it almost pointless.

The crafting itself is rather simple.  You combine ingredients that you commonly find on the ground into an item, weapon, armor, or miscellaneous item.  Doing so raising your experience and thus raises your level.

Upon leveling up from combat and crafting you will gain a point that you can invest in one of three trees.  Investing in health gives you more health, magic gives you more mana, and stamina…. well I never did quite figure out what stamina was used for since I never once needed it.  However I did mistakenly invest two points in it, which made me feel silly.  I felt silly because by Level 6 I was finished the game.  That means almost 50% of my points were wasted with no way of refreshing it.

You’re probably thinking Level 6 makes for a short game, and you would be right.  The game has about 3 hours of gameplay.  When asked as to whether or not new content would be added to the game they said this:

“ I might add some content in the future giving the fact people seem to really enjoy the game. It wouldn’t be DLC but free updates because I’m not a big fan of DLC and I’d rather make a whole new game than selling little pieces of an “old” one.

I would be interested to add some co-op elements first (some simple one, like in Deathspank where the player 2 is really different than the first one, doesn’t have inventory, etc…) but I have to add gamepad support first (because aiming without the mouse is a pain) so it might take some time.

Then I’ll see how it goes from there depending on the time it takes and the funds I’ll have left after that.”

So it seems there will be no effort made to add more content to the game, rather add functionality to a game that people very easily finish.  It really does seem like the people who made this game have mixed up priorities.  The reason why DLC is so popular is because it gives people more stuff to do in a game.  Adding controller support only opens up the game to be played on consoles.

The game has a huge problem, it’s very fun… but there isn’t much of a game there.  A typical RPG is going to be between 20-100 hours of gameplay.  A 3 hour gameplay basically introduces you to the RPG elements and then ends the game.  It’s so poorly paced that any mistake you’ve made has a huge effect on the end of the game.

Steam Sales Review #71: Dragon Age Origins

I really felt like I needed to play a great game, so I installed the one that everyone was talking about…. years ago.  Dragon Age Origins gets some really weird mixed reactions.

On the one side you have conservative media who was upset that the video game featured sex… and then went on to feature gay sex.  You had people who were excited about an RPG with so many options.

And when it released everyone thought either the game was really stupid, or really amazing.

So I decided I’d buy Dragon Age: Ultimate for an extra $5 (sale price was $15).  I can say with some sort of honesty that I’ve been burned in the past by not getting all of the DLC.  That extra $5 could easily become a $40 purchase.  Ironically if you don’t buy ultimate you don’t even have a chance to buy DLC…. it’s all bundled in Ultimate.

How messed up is that?

So the game starts off with one of nine possible stories in which the first hour of your game is different and the remainder of the game is roughly the same…. so that means you get a whopping nine hours of extra gameplay from different introductions.  I made nine saves and got through every single starting area.  I was most impressed by the Male Dwarf Warrior… so that’s what I played as.

One of the problems with the game is actually the story telling at these introductions (and not so much beyond that).  A good story will use coincidences to get the hero in trouble, but not use coincidences to get him out of trouble.  This is just the case.  There is always a need to invent a reason for your hero to jump in on the journey.  It’s like trying to fit a round peg into a square works fine if you make the circle small enough.

This game is REALLY dialogue heavy.  You’ll spend most of your time talking to people.  Even purchasing and selling items brings up a round if dialogue.  Oddly everyone in the game speaks except for you.  It’s as if having a protagonist who actually speaks would just be weird.

Another odd thing is blood splatter.

If you are engaged in a fight and talk to someone closely after your army and face get this really odd pattern of blood on them.  I know it’s intended to be realistic… but why oh why 5 seconds later does this happen:

Magically clean, all is fine!  This blood splatter especially takes away from the dialogue when you have four adventures who all have blood on their face simultaneously.  It becomes really difficult to pay attention to dialogue being given from a guy who has blood just above his lips… I mean shouldn’t that blood have moved down into his mouth at some point…. that is if we’re trying to be realistic.

I’m pretty sure no game has ever done this and I’m pretty sure no game ever will.  It’s just really weird.

So eventually you will get a dog.  Of course as an owner of two dogs I know it doesn’t matter what I call him his name will always be…

It’s a weird part of this universe in which there are these war attack dogs.  It’s kind of similar in tone to the American dogs in Red Alert or the zombie hunting wiener dogs in World War Z (the book, not the movie).  There is one giant epic scene in which the first wave of the defense plan is to send a bunch of dogs at the enemy zombie like things.  It’s cool to watch

The game tries to hybridize RTS game play and RPG elements together.  You control four players who each have somewhere between 10-20 abilities.  So you’re constantly microing back and forth between various heroes trying to get as many abilities as possible.

The combat is fun, how the encounters happen is not.

Combat will engage and a bunch of people will mob you.

It all just happens so fast and having played this on the hardest difficulty, I can say it just isn’t very fun dying to random encounters.

I mean honestly Bioware, this is how it works.  The boss fights are super hard and challenging.  We’re all willing to re-load saves for that.  But a random encounter with a bunch of bandits…. that shouldn’t break the bank.

Unlike most people who’ve played this game… I just didn’t find it all that enjoyable.

The dialogue was good… but there just seemed to be too much… even for a Bioware game.  The combat was fun…. but harder difficulties make playing skillful pointless and depends on more random factors.

Having said that on easy difficulty the game is enjoyable and very playable.  The game is 60 hours of gameplay with all of the DLC and expansions adding another 60 hours.

Unfortunately it feels as though easy is the only really enjoyable difficulty and anyone who reviewed this game clearly only played it on easy.

If you’re looking for an easy game to playthrough this is your game… but anything higher in difficulty is just completely unplayable.

Review: Barkley Shut up and Jam Gaiden

From Tales of Games is a free retro feeling RPG… about Charles Barkley.  This game is entirely free to play and available for download at their website.  As I write this they are working on a follow up sequel which will just be called Barkley 2.

If you’re one of dem there youngins you probably wouldn’t know that the 90s was the pinnacle of Basketball fever.  Everyone was wearing Jerseys not of their favorite teams… but because basketball jerseys were highly promoted by the gangster rap.

This was a sub-product of just how popular basketball was…. or at least how popular people thought it was.  The Air Jordan shoe was one of the most popular shoes of all time and people realistically thought it was because it was backed by Michael Jordan… as opposed to being heavily advertised by shoe companies and just overwhelmingly being a very good quality shoe.

The weirdest of the basketball 90s was definitely Space Jam.

This movie largely survives because Bill Murray gets pulled into it.  But it features a tonne of basketball players including Michael Jordan, Patrich Ewing, Charles Barkley, and Shawn Bradley.  The premise was that a bunch of tiny monsters wanted to take over the world of Loonie Toons.  The Loonie Toons challenge the monsters to a basketball contest, the monsters are finger sized so its seen as an easy win.  The monsters steal the “basketball powers” of popular basketball stars at the time.  Realizing they’re in trouble they summon Michael Jordan to help them win the game…. and of course Bill Murray.  Despite this movie being terrible in every way it did amazingly in theater, survives as a cult classic and has one of the greatest musical soundtracks of any movie ever invented.

Next on the ridiculous list is Michael Jordan’s own video game.

Often rated as one of the worst video games of all time (top ten worst list) this was a side scroller in which Michael Jordan would throw fire basketball at people.  Because Michael Jordan felt his image was so valuable he wouldn’t be in a single basketball game either than Larry Bird vs Michael Jordan 1 on 1 (which was just a shoot out for Larry Bird and Slam dunk competition for Michael Jordan) and wouldn’t be seen in an actual basketball game until NBA Street V.2.  By that point he sold his image to every single basketball game.

But of course this is all not as bad as Shaq’s game.

Shaqfu was also a massive failure.  It was a fighter game featuring the biggest man in the game against random enemies from an alternate universe.  It was a tie in with Shaq’s branding seeing as he was trying to be an action hero via Steel.

So yes basketball was really popular and the fact that if you grew up in the 90s and you actually played these games more or less goes to show exactly how popular these guys were.

So when this game states that everything in this video game is canon…. well you’d think we’re in a world of pain.

Initially you get a few laughs from the game.  It is making fun of all of these basketball games.

But eventually the jokes go away…. and you start to realize that among all of the ridiculousness there is a serious attempt at a story.

So you are Charles Barkey.

Yes the black bald guy with the pink shirt, yep Charles Barkley.  Charles Barkley of course did have his own game called “Shut up and Jam.”  It was a simple street basketball game.  Charles Barkley dunked so hard that he destroyed an entire city…. and after the great basketball player purge he promised to never play basketball again.

Michael Jordan shows up as  turn coat.

But once you get  passed all of the ridiculous elements of the game you actually find there’s a deep story here.  Charles Barkley is a single father and too proud to simply give up on his son.  Charles Barkley is also an angry black man always telling people off and getting upset with the world.

In this way the characters are more real and believable than most of the movies and video games based on a serious premise.

The only real problem with the game is that it has “in humor.”  In humor is a very weird and specific to all jokes are inside jokes… that is only jokes that people inside the circle will understand.  They’re most common in parodies and if you didn’t watch the original the parody is never funny.

Penny Arcade has this problem, they’ve developed characters and fans that they often just reference their own jokes.

So as an example you might have to know that Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley had this historic feud.  You might need to have watched Space Jam to get that its even a joke.

If you don’t know any of these things it just comes off as a really super serious story with real people instead of fakes.

Regardles, overwhelmingly this is a good game for anyone who enjoys retro style RPGs.  The game is excellent regardless of basketballers being a part of it.

Steam Sales Review #68: Titan Quest

You’ll have to forgive the graphics because the game was made in 2005…. 2005….. 2005!

WHAT TEH F@#*!

Diablo 2 was released in 2000.

Why does a game made in 2005 have crappier graphics than one five years previous?  I’m sure people asked this very question at the time.  For those not in the know check this out.

Item exists but is not selected:

Item selected:

Like I’m really sorry but that’s just terribly odd.  Diablo had already established that you have to give names to loot dropped on the ground and it is just a standard that every single game out there used.  I’m sorry but this is unacceptable.

Oh wait…. Titan Quest was made by downed company THQ… wasn’t it.

Well as it turns out this game was picked up by Nordic Games (makers of Painkiller) as well as were most of the THQ properties.  It’s actually rather bizarre how much of THQ’s shit they picked up.  They’ve actually created a full forum asking people’s opinions on what THQ titles they should develop first.

The popular IPs people want to develop are Red Faction, MX vs ATV, Destroy All Humans, and Supreme Commander.  The Red Faction discussion is definitely worth checking out because anyone who indicates a plot driven RPG with any depth are immediately silenced by the mob of people yelling I WANT A DESTRUCTION OF THINGS SIMULATOR!!!

But I digress, we’re here to talk about Titan Quest, especially in light that there might some day soon be a sequel to it.

The game is based in Greece and so everything is bright and shiny… unless you are in a cave.

This can be compared to Torchlight which is fantasy-cartoony and Diablo which is very dark… this game is very bright.  I’m not entirely sure whether or not this is good or bad.  I know dark works really well in Diablo and I know fantasy works really well in Torchlight…. but I don’t know if sunny really works in a titan slaying game.  Personally when I think of Greece I think of this:

Its dark its epic and the minions of Greece are coming upon you!

The game has some other ‘hits’ against it.

The major one has to do with the class system.  After one level you get to choose your class.

I chose archers.  So all of the weapons I pick up that aren’t bows are useless and I have little to no choices of things to invest into.  Most RPGs tend to go with allowing you to get a little bit of each.  This game starts you off with a dagger and then offers you up eight random trees.

As an archer I realized the game has a fault… everything leashes.  By this I mean there is an invisible leash on them and once they hit that point they will turn around and try and run away.

I did this through the entire game and realized i never actually needed any skills at all.  I just invested in passives the entire way there.

This proved to be very boring.  This can be compared to a game like Diablo in which you mix and match different features from different trees because if you don’t have some magic you will just get overwhelmed and die.  But this game was trying to go for the multiplayer experience in which different styles mix and mash…. but it doesn’t and probably never had such a community.

In the end the game made for a pretty poor single player experience.  The great co-op games of our time (Borderlands and Diablo) were amazing single player games that just got that much better when you add in people.

Steam Sales Review #66: Fable 3

So I decided it was time to try out an RPG again.  I mean a real RPG.  So it’s on to Fable 3.

For whatever reason people really hated this game on launch.  I never really played Fable 2 and never really had interest, despite it being rewarded Game of the Year by many people.

Maybe also people were just getting sick of designer Peter Molyneux.  I don’t know.

But despite 5 years of reviews telling me this game is bad, let’s give it a try shall we?

Well game starts and guess what, Games for Windows.

If you’re reading this two years from now and have never encountered Games for Windows its because even Windows knows it sucks.  The Games for Windows brand was completely chewed up by the XBOX Live Arcade which is now available on PC.  So thankfully no more games will use this evil spyware/malware that Windows forces you to install to play their games.

So we start off like most RPGs immediately showing us who the bad guy is.  In this case it’s your brother  You run away to start a revolution.  But of your you’re the evil king’s brother so you have to get around to convince everyone you are a good guy after all.

Of course, the game has the typical Fable moral systems in which you can be either an asshole to people and play the devil card or be a nice person and find lovers.

This part of the game is pretty odd to say the least.  It felt like early on that this game was “Shaking Hands Simulator.”

I was granted experience for shaking a person’s hands

So I did this 42 times in a row until my experience was so absolutely retardedly high that I was massively ahead of everyone else.  Eventuall I was able to get more gestures but for the first bit… man this was a loto f the game…. just shaking hands of people.

Oh Hi Tom The Crate Carrier, what an interesting job you have there.  Might I shake your hand?  I certainly don’t want to belch on you because that would be mean.

The game even wants to spit on graves (literally) when you come to this opening scene.

This is the tomb of the hero from the last game.  We’re here to rob is grave and continue the destiny of the hero that was never mentioned in fable 2 (supposedly).

From here you move on to your first ally.

But not before having to kill all these freaking bats!

Fighting in the game comes three fold.  You have a gun you can fire, magic spells you can fire, and a single melee weapon to whack things with.  The melee weapon upgrades based on how you use it (defense, offense, power attacks, killing certain types of mobs).  As does the pistol/rifle.  The magic moves up on its own without having to be used…. so there’s a huge advantage given to using your actual weapons.

Well as the game started introducing me through elements of the game I gained the quest “make money.”  Now in most games you make money by selling items you get off of people or murdering people to get items off of them.  No not in this game, you have a profession like everyone else!

Bread Baking Simulator!

Lute Playing simulator!

Actually I didn’t find the bread baking all that bad so I kept doing it and bought all of the homes and businesses in the first community.  I would continue this land baron approach throughout the game.  To me it was the charms of the original games.  If people don’t want to sell, you kill them and steal their home.  Renting homes allowed for a slow trickle of cash throughout the game.

One thing I”ll never understand about Peter Molyneox is his strange obsession with chickens.

It’s just getting weird at this point.

So on the personal side of things you can get married.

Well it certainly gets awkward fast after you get married as you can have sex with your wife.

If you find a condom you can have protected sex… just for fun I guess.    Unprotected sex causes the creation of a child.  Where it gets awkward is when you marry two women…. in the same town.

They seem to be mostly fine with each other and as it turns out you can have an orgy with them and have a 2 babies at once incident.  There is seemingly no limit to how many times you can get married as long as you have a wedding ring and a home.

To make it “interesting” you can become friends with someone by simply doing a friend’s quest for them.  Every single person in the game can have this… so think about 1500 different friend’s quests in the game.

Kind of insane.

There actually ends up being so much you can do just here that you really don’t go outside of the bounds of this.

On top of this there are silver keys to find, gnomes to find, books to find, and treasure chests looted throughout the kingdom.

Following the old Fables there are demon doors that ask you to solve minor riddles.

This is a game loaded full of stuff to do…. so much stuff that you end up forgetting there is a main storyline there.  The sub plots are all tongue in cheek humor and truthfully…. more interesting.

And that’s really the only down side of the game…. the main story has very little depth to it.  It’s kind of a huge weakness for an RPG.  What’s neat is the post game in which you become king and have to rule your palace and either keep or not keep all of the promises you made the people.  All the while you can clean up any unfinished business… as the king.

I won’t spoil any story elements but every single story comes down to this:

If you make good choices you’re all shiny and if you make bad choices you get a red aura with horns sticking out of your head and vampire teeth.

Another major problem finally comes in with the awkward saving system.  If you just rely on auto saves you are fine.  But instead of going with a typical save game slot they have decided to create a “room” of save games.  If you decide to use “Quick Save” there is a 50% chance your data will corrupt and the game will force you to start over.

Overall Fable 3 is worth your money when it comes on sale… I’d even go as far as buying the Traitor’s Quest Pack.

Great game, probably under-rated by reviewers because of its similarities to Fable 2.